Latency an annoyance in World of Warcraft

[Sonikku]

I live in rural America where broadband isn't available in any shape or form other then Satellite, and I know I cannot fault Blizzard for less then flawless performance on dial up. However, I've looked in task manager and I notice that WoW hardly utilizes my bandwidth at all, with latency in the yellow or sometimes red.

http://img.photobucket.com/alb...oxy_McCloud/dialup.jpg

WoW is certainly playable as is, but I'd just like to see if there were any way I could improve the latency a little. Is there a way to prioritize WoW bandwidth wise? How might I increase WoW's utilization of my bandwidth, if such a thing is even possible? Thank you for your time.

 

[Newfie]

Did you pick a server thats decently close to you?

 

[Scouzer]

Hillbillies don't let hillbillies play Warcraft.

 

[Wheelock]

Originally posted by: Scouzer
Hillbillies don't let hillbillies play Warcraft.

Screw that! If I had a ton of cash, I'd plant a nice manor in the middle of 100 acres and live the life of a country squire.

 

[Sonikku]

Originally posted by: Scouzer
Hillbillies don't let hillbillies play Warcraft.

Corporate America doesn't let Rural America upgrade.

 

[Dallows]

Its not the utilization of your bandwidth but the connection between you and the server. that's why the latency is high.

 

[rstrohkirch]

Like stated above, you're treating latency and bandwidth as the same term when they aren't.

 

[CKent]

Originally posted by: Dallows
Its not the utilization of your bandwidth but the connection between you and the server. that's why the latency is high.

Yep, OP is confusing speed with volume. I'm not sure why dial-up has high latency, it woudl be interesting to find out. Can't be the hardware, it must be the phone lines? But then why is DSL fine?

Anyway, it's not entirely without hope. WoW has 2 physical server locations, one in California and one in Louisiana. I've noticed my latency to Louisiana servers is far lower than to California ones - I'm in New York. I'm not sure if there's a litsting of physical locations, but generally if you go by time zone you'll mind PST/MST servers are CA-based while CST/EST servers are LA-based. Of course, you still want to confirm this by making a level 1 on that server and checking latency.

PS - don't get satellite, whatever you do. Speed is high but latency is much worse than even dialup.

 

[Aikouka]

Heck, sometimes I've had WoW report very high latency numbers and I've been completely lag-less. I used to play WoW on dial-up when that's all I could get and you usually get around 400-500ms latency. It's playable, but you cannot do large BGs like AV, but smaller BGs are possible.

 

[Sonikku]

Originally posted by: CKent


PS - don't get satellite, whatever you do. Speed is high but latency is much worse than even dialup.

God damnit. That's the only form of broadband of any kind I can get right now. I'm so fucking tired of dial up. -_-

 

[exdeath]

It's the numerous analog/digital/analog conversions and the number of packets that are corrupted by noise while in the analog pipe that have to be resent repeatedly that all contribute to high latency even with low bandwidth requirements. Also the overhead of buffering of small PPP frames and converting to bigger Ethernet frames, and so on. Lot's of extra delay steps that aren't happening in 'real time'.

 

[LeetViet]

http://forums.worldofwarcraft....picId=1271909455&sid=1

 

[se7en]

its ok latency is automatically added once you rolled a lock. They won't hit you with the nerf stick but they can hit you with the 200000ms stick.